Beaches.

The sea is in my soul. Growing up in Cornwall, my vividest memories are of beaches. Jump in the car and a short drive along winding country roads would bring you to the nearest beach. Every family holiday involved camping in my dad’s 4-person mountaineering tent at Mother Ivey’s Bay, a mere hour’s drive from where we lived, sometimes for weeks at a time, every single day spent swimming, running and playing on the pristine beach. We’d wake up before 6am (with the arrival of the gulls) and walk down with our bodyboards, my dad, my sister and me, plunging straight into the cold, grey sea before anyone else was up. Spending that first golden hour, while the beach was deserted, letting the primal call of the sea deep into our bones before heading back to the tent for chocolate porridge (my dad’s speciality made from mixing hot chocolate powder and porridge oats) cooked on the little camping stove. At night we’d walk there again by moonlight, watching for bats and listening to the sound of the waves.

The beach was where we grew up, where we took risks, learned the dangers. From a young age I understood the sea’s power and brutality, more than once getting wiped out by the merciless waves. As the tide came in we’d take turns jumping off the rock, waiting for the perfect moment for the swell to carry us to shore. On calm days my dad would take me out farther than I’d ever gone before, where the seaweed forests grew, where we could no longer see the sandy sea bed. We’d swim round the cliffs, all the way to the next bay along, where the lifeboat station lay. (I was a strong swimmer from an early age.) Every time I felt the deep thrill of danger mixed with excitement. I understood the sea’s wildness. You enter the sea with respect, as it can so easily turn on you.

Later on, the beach came to symbolise freedom. My friends and I would drive down to the beach for the day during the summer holidays, after school had ended to escape the confines of small town life.

The wild ones have a special place in my heart. The undiscovered coves, away from the beaten track and the tourist hotspots. The ones that involve a treacherous climb down a crumbling cliff path, where the reward is a place that feels special, where no lifeguards patrol and you enter the water at your own risk. Those beaches have formed my dreams ever since I was young. For a long time I had the same recurring dream where I would be swimming at an impossibly beautiful beach and the waves would begin to get higher and higher until they became terrifying. I would always wake up at that point. These days I dream of paddling in the shallows in calmer waters, where the sand stretches for miles.

Standing on the shore still sets my heart racing. The threshold between the known, familiar world and the vast unknown. I still feel it calling to me. These days my opportunities to swim in the sea are far less frequent, and I take every one of them I can. I live a long way from the beach now. But the beach is still home.